How to take good pictures of myself? - 1

--please read--

hello everyone,
I'm asking whether any of you know how to take a good picture of myself, I find that pictures make me look a lot different to how I look in the mirror, my skin looks red and shiny, my hair looks terrible etc.

I have noticed that if I use flash to take pictures it makes them a lot better, my facial features look defined, my skin tone looks more natural.

I take all my pictures with my iPhone, I'm aware this isn't the best way to take pictures but it's all I have at the moment.

Overall - pictures without flash make me look different, my facial features look minimal, my face looks fatter. With flash my face is much more structured, my tone looks natural everything looks better

Thanks for taking time to read this
all answers appreciated, have a good day

You are trying to take the pictures without flash with too little light and/or in light that has a color tone to it and the camera is attempting to adapt to the poor conditions. The flash is easy for the camera to balance.

Get someone handsome to pose for you, then claim you look better in photos.

You are fighting a losing battle, since the iPhone has a wide angle lens and wide angle lenses distort faces, especially when taken from arms length.

Your red, shiny face should tell you that the lighting is not balanced for the cameras settings. When shooting indoors under incandescent light with a camera with a white balance set for full sun, All images will become reddish orange.

There are just no controls on a mobile that can correct these flaws.

You only really have two choices.

* stop taking selfies with your mobile
* buy a separate camera (P&S) which has a 3x optical zoom lens and shoot your selfies with the camera mounted on a tripod and the lens set to its telephoto setting.

Using a tripod can be frustrating at first since you have to make sure that the camera is focused where you will be when the self-timer activates the shutter and that the camera is aimed where you will be when the camera takes the shot.

Those artists who have galleries of their selfies have been at it for years and most use either a 35 mm SLR and telephoto lens with a remote shutter release so they can take photo after photo and self direct their poses. This technique will also work if you use a digital SLR camera.

The problem is that there's a rather large investment involved if you decide this is the way you want to go.

For now, have your friends photograph you with your camera under good lighting (outdoors in the shade is the best) or using the flash on the mobile, standing at least four feet from you.

Taking photos with a phone held at arms length is the worst possible way to take a self portrait. Phones also take very poor photographs especially in low light. To get anything decent, you need to shoot during daylight.

Why don't you just borrow a real camera? Or ask a friend who has a real camera to take your photo. Or buy a cheap point and shoot camera.

If you are taking saelfies, then it's almost impossible to take a good photo at arm's length.
The phone camera lens has too wide an angle and will always distort the face when held so close.
The photo should be taken from about 5 feet away.